Ships

EvEvanstar3,5

In this game, players place ship tokens along the outside of the track to either drop a cube into a goods slot in the central board, or place a disk on a disk spot in the central board. Every time a ship gets placed, it reduces the token cost to place a ship in the next area. The first player to enter a new area gets some bonus points, and players who have ship tokens in previous eras lose some points. It's possible to spend your actions and resources to remove old boats or move old boats into new eras, but it's a strategy decision in terms of if that's your most efficient move or not. There are also areas in the central map. When a new area there gets entered, the previous era scores. Each era scores one more point per thing that the era before it, so at the beginning of the game each spot is producing roughly 2vp per thing, but at the end of the game it goes up to 7 per. This brings me to the one thing holding me back from loving this game. Getting into the last area is so valuable. If the last area only gets entered in the final round, there's a chance whoever was unlucky enough to come earlier in turn order won't get a chance to put into there before the game ends. This usually means that the starting player is at a strange disadvantage, only in this once instance, and yet it's important enough that it could mean that if they aren't careful they might lose by virtue of only that. I'm not saying it's impossible for players earlier in turn order to win, but it seems like they need to know to play in such a way that they are the ones to open up that last area, AND that the game ends on that turn, which is a lot to ask. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ☆ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★☆☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment